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Comment by mike_esspe | Hacker News Reader

  One of the agents produced a printout of a blog post
  that Afifi’s friend Khaled allegedly wrote a couple 
  of months ago. It had “something to do with a mall 
  or a bomb,” Afifi said*

The nickname of the friend of this student, who posted the story on reddit is "khaledthegypsy", and he posted this comment couple of months ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ciiag/so_if_my_de...

Seems like FBI didn't bother to check the context of that comment.

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The comment doesn't justify any sort of spying. It's not a threat, but a seemingly true observation. Schneier has said essentially the same.

Call me a cynic but I think they did. His comment is right, the "war on terror" is and always has been bullshit. The people who benefit from convincing the public that there is some imminent terrorist threat would probably love to shut people up who point out why there isn't.

The FBI probably has a spider bot which searches for keywords. Ooh, they are high-tech. Too bad they don't review the effectiveness of the "threat" detection.

Our tax dollars being put to good use.

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